Swiftech was once one of the biggest names in air cooling but eventually stopped designing new products for the retail market, shifting their focus to watercooling. This happened so long ago that the last last Swiftech heatsink SPCR reviewed was the MCX462-V for socket A! Swiftech continued to quietly produce the MCX series with its easily recognizable helicoid aluminum pin design for newer sockets, but the company has not been in the air cooling game for many years.

The box.

The Polaris 120 CPU cooler is Swiftech's re-entry into CPU air cooling. The Polaris has the form of a typical tower heatsink with a 120 mm PWM fan and significant mass of aluminum fins, but what makes it unique are five 8 mm diameter direct touch heatpipes made famous by Xigmatek and other manufacturers.

Package contents.

The Polaris 120 ships with a black and white 120 mm fan, fan clips, mounting hardware, and thermal compound. The only thing notable about the package is that an extra of every screw, bolt, and nut is included in case you happen to lose one. It's a small gesture but very much appreciated.

Overkill as 40 mm is larger than the heatspreaders of modern desktop processors, and the actual die is even smaller.

Fins form wind tunnels for optimum airflow, resulting in more efficient use of the fan, therefore better cooling.

Okay.

Direct-touch base technology provides an optimized transfer of the heat to the pipes.

Heat is transferred directly from the CPU heatspreader to the heatpipes via the thermal compound, a more efficient process than having a baseplate acting as a go-between.

A single high Power (84CFM) PWM controlled 120mm fan is included:

*Being PWM controlled, the fan plugs into the motherboard CPU fan header, and users can either let the motherboard manage the fan speed, or tune it to their own specifications; the speed ranges from 750 to 2500 RPM allowing a wide range of operations: from ultra-quiet all the way to extreme cooling for seriously overclocked processors.